Apple applies for US Patent for audio assist

I thought this was interesting in relation to mp3car Macs.

Apple has applied for a US Patent for systems that assist the user of a music player by speaking such things as "Play", "Next Track", etc as confirmation of the action requested. According to the article, the patent also covers verbal confirmation of info in the MP3 tag such as the title, artist, album, etc.

I wonder if this applies to computers as well...and if so, are Mac's exempt? I also wonder if software from people on this forum (particularly the PC side) might not serve as prior art that would invalidate this application...